A Buffer Zone for Biodiversity Conservation: Viability of the Concept in Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park

A buffer zone for RCNP is considered an effective means to mitigate and contain the Park-local people conflict. Its creation adjacent to the National Park will enable local people to engage in multiple use activities that will provide benefits not only to themselves but protect the Park's integrity as well. Except for the much-degraded Barandabar Forest, the other small parcels of forest that exist around the Royal Chitwan National Park are highly inadequate to provide additional wildlife protection and environmental conservation. RCNP does not have any area that, to date, is exclusively designated as a buffer zone. The Barandabar Forest is still envisaged as an additional protection to the Park, although continual grazing, lopping of branches and twigs from trees, and timber extraction, by the local people, have extensively diminished its biological values. Before our survey, the majority of local people did not have any idea of a buffer zone and its potential benefits. When briefed elaborately, very few people seemed to be optimistic about its feasibility. The Rapti river-banks were indicated as the potential areas. The southern riverbank could be developed as an extended habitat for large animal wildlife, while the northern bank could be developed as a 'socio-buffer'. However, two practical cons traints, namely frequent flooding and ownership of barren land, will have to be resolved if the Rapti river-banks are to be converted into a buffer zone. Adjoining these would be the existing Barandabar Forest, whose proper restoration, control, and management, are indispensable. The local people indicated fodder and firewood as their main criteria for the establishment of a buffer zone, followed by flooding which was a major problem in the vicinity of RCNP. Some examples in the study-area illustrated that local people had been capable of managing natural resources by themselves. It was emphasized that local people should be put in charge of managing the buffer zone - especially those to whom conservation seemed a natural, inborn concern. In the event of its establishment, many local people were willing to assume a shared management responsibility. Their willingness was determined by their age, level of education, volume of crop-loss, household size, and land-holding size. Strong support from the concerned government agencies is very important indeed, as they will have to provide technical guidance. Bestowing the responsibility upon a high-level authority would be unwise, as the local people would most probably perceive it as yet another restriction imposed on their traditional rights for example to use the Barandabar Forest. A small-scale and less detailed buffer zone project would be feasible, that would be facilitated by people's support in the long run, relying on local initiative and mobilizing extant institutional mechanisms to perform related activities. The use of GIS technology has become widely prominent in spatial modelling. It can contribute significantly to identifying and delineating a buffer zone for a protected area, taking into consideration several complex biophysical and socio-economic criteria. The interplay of these criteria in a GIS context could produce several alternatives for planning and designing a buffer zone for RCNP.